Something deep in the American heart thrills to the words “world’s largest.” Add those words to two others that resonate delightfully during a summer along the Chesapeake Bay — “crab feast” — and you’ve really got something.

Specifically, you’ve got the Annapolis Rotary Crab Feast, a summertime ritual that now goes back 69 years. It will start at 5 p.m. Friday at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The Rotary Club is expecting nearly 2,500 people to show up to demolish 350 bushels of crabs, 3,400 ears of corn, 100 gallons of crab soup, 1,800 hot dogs, 150 pounds of beef barbecue and 100 watermelons.

There are four good things — great things, actually — to be said about this summertime ritual, and one necessary caution.

First, at $65 for adults and $20 for children for all the crabs and extras you can eat, it’s a good deal. Second, it’s second to none as a community gathering and a friendly venue for honing crab-eating skills.

Third, it’s for a good cause — actually good causes. Last year’s feast raised about $71,000, which the Rotary Club doled out to 38 worthwhile local organizations.

Fourth, the Rotary Club and Annapolis Green are working together to make this a zero-waste event, with all the trash recycled or composted and nothing sent on to the landfill.

The necessary caution is that this is a county and state election year, so the politicians will be out in force. But they are not allowed to hand out literature or bumper stickers (and etiquette forbids threatening them with little mallets).

The Rotary Crab Feast is something every area resident should experience at least once, and many regulars would not miss. You can’t ask for a better way to start an August in the Land of Pleasant Living.

Thinking small

Given the American love of elbow room, we doubt many have a 210-square-foot house in their future. But for the more than 50 middle-school students who’ve taken part in building the trailer-mounted “tiny house” — in a summer camp project organized by The Key School and SustainaFest, a Maryland nonprofit organization — there are some big lessons.

With its solar panels and rainwater filtration system, the house is designed to operate off the grid and with the smallest carbon footprint possible, and to incorporate an extensive body of knowhow about how to make a living space comfortable, compact and eco-friendly.

There have to be lessons here for students growing up in a nation where housing is so often more expensive, more expansive and more environmentally taxing than it needs to be. And how many of us can say we spent three weeks of our summer vacation building a house?

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